


Other People's Stories

by sophinisba



Category: Day Zero (2007)
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Cultural Appropriation, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-01
Updated: 2008-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron went to Southeast Asia looking for a story to tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other People's Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to absolutefiction and claudia603 for betaing.

Backpacking in Southeast Asia wasn't supposed to be a vacation, a reward for finishing his degree. The summer on a salmon ship in Alaska the year before hadn't been for the money. The college semester in France wasn't just so he could learn French. They're all just attempts to get some experience, to have something happen to him, something worthy of writing down and writing well. Because what good is an MFA if you don't have a story to tell? But no matter how far he goes from home it's the same: the good stories keep happening to other people.

He listens to other people's war stories. Used to be, when Aaron thought of Vietnam he thought of war movies, of scared young recruits shouting "Yes, sir!" – no matter what the order. Now Vietnam means an old woman telling how her world ended the day the Americans came to her village. She doesn't sound angry, just tired, her voice flat as if she's told this story so many times it doesn't belong to her anymore. Aaron tries to imagine himself into her scarred, shrunken skin, and fails. He takes notes so he won't have to look her in the eyes.

On a bus in Thailand he meets a girl from Marseille and a guy from Manchester. He translates for them at first – tells Charlie about growing up as a Muslim girl in France, tells Miriam about Charlie's fucked up relationship with his brother. They're both young and beautiful, wounded and proud. Aaron talks between them, tries to decide for himself which one he wants more. But by that night at the guesthouse in Bangkok they've figured out how to communicate without him. Aaron lies still in his bed while Charlie crawls into Miriam's. They don't care that he can hear.

Since coming to Malaysia he's run low on money and wanderlust. He's not built for farm labor but it seems like the right fit anyhow; for the first time in memory the exhaustion is stronger than the insomnia, and he sleeps like a baby. Still, the best part of the day is just before bed, when he sits with the others drinking samsu and telling stories around a campfire. The first time it comes around to him he tells how Dixon got thrown out of school for helping George. It's quiet when he finishes. From then on he just listens.

Lately he's been thinking about the legends carried by minstrels, stories traded on harsh journeys across Europe, only a few of them surviving to the present because only a few men ever thought to write them down. When he hears the story of love and fire and sacrifice it's all Aaron can do to sit still with open mouth and open ears, but afterwards he stays up all night writing. It's not stealing, he thinks, it's just like the Middle Ages, the storytellers and the scribe. From the old man's mouth into Aaron's notebook, the story belongs to him now.


End file.
